MH370: What is the truth?

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Why did Malaysia take a week to call off the search in the South China Sea if it already knew that the plane had flown west towards the Indian Ocean, wonders P Ramakrishnan.

A media conference on the MH740 in progress – Photograph: themalaymailonline.com

The nation and its people have been traumatised by the mysterious disappearance of MH370 while on an overnight flight to Bejing. This mystery has not been solved in spite of the involvement of 26 countries deploying dozens of ships and planes to scour thousands of nautical miles of land and sea.

Today is the tenth day and we are clueless as to what happened. Has the plane crashed or landed? All the sophisticated technology deployed in the search has not yielded any results. How the person behind the controls of the plane managed to outwit radar and modern technology is baffling!

To compound the mystery, there is the tragedy of 239 lives whose fate is still unknown. Are they alive? Are they being held captive?

The friends and relatives of the passengers and crew are in agony and pain and very angry. They have complained of not being given adequate information for whatever reason. And all of them are suffering over the mysterious disappearance of the plane with their loved ones in it.

Was the plane hijacked? It is stated that it is no longer a theory but conclusive that it has indeed been hijacked. If so, by whom and for what purpose? Normally in cases involving hijacking there would be a demand for ransom. In this case there has been no such demand.

The British tabloid The Daily Mail has introduced a political angle to the disappearance of MH370. According to the tabloid, the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad, may have hijacked the plane as a political protest against Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s latest sodomy conviction.

If it was political retaliation, why hasn’t there been a political statement to that effect? Normally there would be a statement to drive home the message but in this case there was none.

There have been allegations that the Malaysian government has not been forthcoming with its evidence resulting in the wasted effort in scouring the China Sea for the wreckage of the plane. Malaysia came under criticism from China for squandering precious time and resources by releasing dramatic information on the fate of the plane a full week after it had vanished.

Why did Malaysia take a week to call off the search in the South China Sea if it already knew that the plane had doubled back and flown west towards the Indian Ocean? China’s state-run Xinhua news agency claimed that the Malaysian officials were guilty of an “intolerable” dereliction of duty.

There are many questions to this mystery but the truth is elusive. What really happened? Will we ever know the truth?

The MH370 has hogged the media headlines so much so the Kajang by-election has disappeared into the background. There is hardly any worthwhile reporting.

If you compare what is happening now to the reality before the MH370 tragedy struck us, you would realise that the Kajang by-election is no longer top news. The by-election had previously dominated everything else. The ceramahs wereclosely followed and reported. Anwar was everywhere in Kajang.It really gave Umno the jitters. A trouncing in Anwar’s favour would have spelt the death blow for Umno. But the judiciary, in a determined effort to put away Anwar, has solved that problem. See Unholy haste to put Anwar away.

How his conviction was rushed through by denying him every opportunity to defend himself will long be remembered.

The Kajang voters must show their disgust and punish the Barisan Nasional in a way that it will not forget that its days are numbered.

Indonesia passes Anti-Racial Discrimination Bill

Six years ago, Indonesia, a vast Muslim nation, passed a bill against racial discrimination. With the passing of this bill, it was hoped there would be no moreethnic or racial discrimination rulings in the country. The nation had learned its lesson the hard way in the wake of riots in the late 1990s which caught the world’s attention.

Indonesia passed this bill in accordance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination that was enacted in 1999 in the United Nations, currently monitored by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In doing so, it joined a host of other nations that haveadopted the Convention.

Today, Indonesian citizens are free from this psychological bondage. If found guilty of any form of ethnic or racial discrimination in Indonesia now, it will certainly land you in jail. Yeah, a jail term is there.

P Ramakrishan, the long-serving former president of Aliran, has been granted a respite and now happily serves as an Aliran executive committee member. He has carried the flag for human rights and democracy for Aliran since its inception in 1977, when the term 'human rights' was considered something of a dirty word.

The Umno schmucks are so used to telling half truths or untruths of everything that happened in this country. In other words, suppressing the truths for so long that they don’t know how to tell the truths. These are revealed so clearly in this instance, what a shamble.The worse of it all, to expose their ability in front of the whole world, shame on you.
Above all are these all you have learned after in control for 57 years !